The Stuff of Legends (Sentence to Story #9)

About to enter the gates of Urquhart Castle, Rupert hobbles up to the entrance trying to adjust his headset for the tour, and yells out, “How do ye turn it down a bit?”

The tour guide grabbed the control box from Rupert and adjusted the volume.

“Is that better?” she asked, smiling.

Rupert saw her mouth the words, but couldn’t hear a thing over static in his ear coming from the audio. Lifting one side of the headset, he gave her a puzzled look, and asked, “Huh?”

“Can you hear it now?” she asked, louder.

He gave a disgruntled nod.

“Come on dad, we need to catch up,” his daughter said, putting her hand around his shoulder.

Catch up. He knew he was going to be playing catch up all day. His whole life he had waited for the time when he could come to Loch Ness. Now that he was here, he was going to have to fight his body, and this boring tour, to get to what he really wanted.

“Dad?”

“I’m coming!” he said gruffly, trying to get his legs going.

At every stop in the castle, Rupert made his impatience known with a heavy sigh or a loud, “When are we going to see Nessie?” Rupert didn’t have time for all the ‘old castle’ shtick. His daughter just rolled her eyes and smiled, apologetically, to the other group members.

Finally, at the end of the tour, they were standing on the shore of the great lake.

“The first account of the Loch Ness Monster dates back to 1933, when…” the guide started.

Rupert took his headphones off and gazed out over the lake. All these years, waiting, he was finally here. He handed the headphones to his daughter, who didn’t seem to mind taking them. She never really understood why he wanted to come anyway.

He slowly walked away from the group and onto a small dock leading out into the lake, the group turning their attention from the tour, to him.

“I’m sorry sir, you’ll need to come back to the group. You need to be off the dock, please,” the guide said, a look of concern on her face.

Rupert ignored her. At the end of the dock, he pulled an old necklace out from inside his shirt. On the end of it was a whistle. He put it to his mouth, smiled and blew long and hard.

There was no audible sound.

“Dad,” his daughter called out, exchanging looks with the guide. “Dad, come on back up here.”

“I’m home,” Rupert said, quietly to himself, before jumping in.

Screams echoed off the shore of the lake, right beside Urquhart Castle, nestled in the Scottish Highlands.

First sentence of this story submitted by Becky W. It received the third most votes for sentences submitted the week of September 24, 2012. Please leave comments below on if you liked the direction I took the story, or if you would have personally went a different way. I would love to know!